from the just-a-tip dept

Wired has the bizarre story of a UK border agent who, in an apparent attempt to get his wife out of his life, put her name on the terrorist watch list, which left her stranded in Pakistan (where she was visiting relatives) for three years, unable to fly back home to the UK. That seems like a rather extreme way to get your wife out of the picture. And, apparently, this nefarious plan all would have worked... if only the guy never thought to apply for a promotion. Since the promotion would involve higher security clearance, he was put through a background check, where it was revealed his wife was on the watchlist. That created a bit of concern... and then it was realized that he had put her there. He's since been fired. Of course, the bigger question is whether or not whoever designed the system in such a way that it would allow a single person to add his own wife to the terrorist watch list, with no oversight and no review, was fired as well. It would seem like that person has some serious questions to answer as well.

Re: Re:

If one hundred people are put on the no fly list when they shouldn't be, is it better to allow 101 to fly and have 400 die?

Is it better for 100 criminals to go free to keep the 1 innocent out of prison? How would you feel if one of those criminals went free and killed your family? Committed a mass killing?

Where does the rights of one outweigh the rights of many?

Go back in time and be in a room with two babies, one of them is Hitler and one of them is a innocent baby. There is no way to know which one is which, but if you kill the Hitler baby, WWII never happens and there is no turmoil in the Mideast today. Would you kill both babies? Should you?

Re:

"Go back in time and be in a room with two babies, one of them is Hitler and one of them is a innocent baby. There is no way to know which one is which, but if you kill the Hitler baby, WWII never happens and there is no turmoil in the Mideast today. Would you kill both babies? Should you?"

The answer to this question can NEVER be anything other than no and no in a civilized society. We that are civilized ought never turn to uncivilized methods to stave off evil, lest we become evil ourselves and defeat our very purpose.

Re:

Is it better for 100 criminals to go free to keep the 1 innocent out of prison? How would you feel if one of those criminals went free and killed your family?

How would YOU feel if YOU were that 1 innocent imprisoned for even just a short while, for whatever reason? Oh, but we can't release you because you were convicted. Lack of evidence be damned.

I was once falsely accused by a friends girlfriend attacking her (breaking into her house and trying to assault or rape her) but when questioned by cops, along with my reaction and a receipt I had for a fast food stop I made, they realized that I was innocent. But what if I didn't have that receipt? The cops would have had to believe my incredulous reaction to realize it wasn't me.

Re:

"How would you feel if one of those criminals went free and killed your family?"
How would you feel if you were the innocent locked up for nothing?
How would you feel to be forced to live with rapists and murders (and possibly become their victim) while you watch from behind bars your family fall apart because you are not there, watch your kids go bad and become real criminals (because they have understandable hatred of society that took the father away for no good reason), responsible for the deaths/destruction of many many family’s, all because you are not there due to no fault of your own?

“WWII never happens and there is no turmoil in the Mideast today. Would you kill both babies?”
And if you kill both babies and because there is no Hitler, someone else raises to the leadership of the Nazi party (which was going to exist regardless of Hitler) but this other guy is a lot better leader/military commander than Hitler, so the Nazis end up winning WWII, Jews are exterminated worldwide, blacks are confined to Africa where they are slave labour for the west and a severely depopulated Asia is Japan’s fiefdom and WWIII between the Japanese and Aryan Empires is looming and it’s expected there will be no survivors

Do you go back and kill yourself before you have a chance to kill Hitler as a baby?

See how pointless these little exercises are? There is always another “what if?”

Much better to get the system of checks and balances right in the first place and if you cannot err on the side of caution

Re:

What the fuck is wrong with you?

What happens to your belief system when you are picked up at the Walmart for looking like the guy some dude saw dragging a women into the bushes and then killed. You are then put on trial with no clear evidence other than the "eye witness" that saw you. Lucky for you the jury is made up of your peers who share your ideas about the rights of the many over the few. They don't like the way you look and think, the cops arrested him he must be guilty.

Fast forward to you on the gurney strapped down for your lethal injection. You think to yourself as the plunger goes down, "Well at least they didn't let 100 guilty guys go so that I didn't get convicted"...You drift off to sleep.

Re:

"If one hundred people are put on the no fly list when they shouldn't be, is it better to allow 101 to fly and have 400 die?"

Follow that logic and you end up banning flying.

"Where does the rights of one outweigh the rights of many?"

In the US Constitution. One person's right to life outweighs everyone else's rights to liberty.

"Go back in time and be in a room with two babies, one of them is Hitler and one of them is a innocent baby. There is no way to know which one is which, but if you kill the Hitler baby, WWII never happens and there is no turmoil in the Mideast today. Would you kill both babies? Should you?"

Perhaps you can explain why there might be no other option available. Is the point of your example that time travellers are too stupid to come up with a better plan than killing a baby?

Re: Re:

"Perhaps you can explain why there might be no other option available. Is the point of your example that time travellers are too stupid to come up with a better plan than killing a baby?"

Well, the problem is that those time travelers are from the future, a future in which internet piracy killed off all creativity. Turns out the time machine was the last great invention. Now those folks can't think of creative ways to use it to stop Hitler because a couple of kids downloaded the Black Eyed Peas album today.

Re: Re: Re:

Re: Idiocy

"Go back in time and be in a room with two babies, one of them is Hitler and one of them is a innocent baby. There is no way to know which one is which, but if you kill the Hitler baby, WWII never happens and there is no turmoil in the Mideast today. Would you kill both babies? Should you?"

I'll see your idiocy and raise you.

What if the other baby was Jesus Christ. Or, if you're not religious... Ghandi... Mother Teresa... Albert Einstein...

You just MURDERED not only an innocent child, but also a cornstone of religious, social or scientific progress.

Re:

"Go back in time and be in a room with two babies, one of them is Hitler and one of them is a innocent baby. There is no way to know which one is which, but if you kill the Hitler baby, WWII never happens and there is no turmoil in the Mideast today. Would you kill both babies? Should you?"

If we want to fix this then we need to start adding celebrities, politicians, and CEO's of big corporations to the list. Then it'll make it all over the news and government(s) will be far more likely to fix the problem.

The Hitler baby story is extreme, but it relates to the many outweighing the few. Isn't that how our society works? People get vaccines, it saves lives, but it does harm some. We require everyone to get the shots because the benefits for the many outweigh the harm for the few.

Again I ask, is it better for 100 criminals to go free to keep 1 innocent man out of prison (or off the no fly list?)

Of course, that begs the question of "does the no fly list stop terrorism?"

Re: Re:

"We require everyone to get the shots because the benefits for the many outweigh the harm for the few."

To add to this, we actually do not require any vaccines (at least not in the US). They are ALL opt out. It is (unfortunately) a bit more work for the parents, but they can refuse any vaccine they want and it is ILLEGAL for anyone to hold that against them. Daycare providers and schools that want to see vaccination records cannot actually refuse entry (at least not in CT) based on refused vaccinations. It is a bit shocking that we even allow them to ask for the records these days.

Re: Re: Re:

sources please.

a parent has the right to expect their children aren't going to be exposed to deadly childhood diseases while publicly provided school. The base way to do this is vaccinating all the children prior to allowing them to attend.

Re: Re: Re: Re:

Easily found sample form:
(We / I) {First and Last name(s)}, as the {(parent (s) /guardian(s)} of (name of newborn child) are exercising (our/my) rights under the First Amendment of the US Constitution , Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 3701.501(A)(2) and §3313.671 to receive Religious Exemption from Vaccination, ALL injections, & testing.

Applicable law has been interpreted to mean that a religious belief is subject to protection even though no religious group espouses such beliefs or the fact that the religious group to which the individual professes to belong may not advocate or require such belief. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as amended Nov. 1, 1980; Part 1605.1-Guidelines on Discrimination Because of Religion.

Our legal rights are guaranteed by the free exercise clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Recent court decisions have upheld the rights of individuals seeking exemptions from immunizations based upon personal and religious reasons. On the U.S. Supreme Court level in Frazee V. Illinois Dept. of Security, 489 U.S. 829, it was found that a state may not deny an exemption simply because a person is not a member of a formal religious organization.

Re: Re: Re:

We decided to "opt out" of a vaccination for our daughter who is in kindergarten in Illinois. The school notified us that if she was not vaccinated, she would not be allowed back. We had to go to extremes and opt out based on religious reasons. At this point, all is well... but they definitely don't make opting out easy.

Re: Re: Re: Re:

Re:

"Again I ask, is it better for 100 criminals to go free to keep 1 innocent man out of prison (or off the no fly list?)"

Firstly, crmiminals is a broad term. My understanding is that at least 20% of the US prison population is there on drugs related charges. No one seems to have a good idea how many of those are guilty of the charges they were convicted for.

Secondly, if it is acceptable to put one innocent person in prison for every hundred criminals then why isn't it acceptable to incarcerate two innocent people for every hundred, or fifty innocent people for every hundred, or just lock everyone up just in case.

'Of course, that begs the question of "does the no fly list stop terrorism?"'

Leaving aside your apparent misuse of the phrase 'begs the question', why would you accept innocent people on the list if you aren't even sure of its effectiveness?

Jews are exterminated worldwide, blacks are confined to Africa where they are slave labour for the west and a severely depopulated Asia is Japan’s fiefdom and WWIII between the Japanese and Aryan Empires is looming and it’s expected there will be no survivors

And your problem with this is what exactly? As Meatloaf once sung, "3 out of 4 ain't bad"

Re:

The problem with your question is that you aren't distinguishing who is doing the rights abridging.

Should the government be allowed to abridge the rights of the innocent? Absolutely not. Should we allow an individual to abridge the rights of others? Again, absolutely not. So you're question rewritten is:

Is it worse for the government to abridge the rights of one innocent man or for one person to kill 10 or 100 people?

Another way of putting is:

Is it better that we keep our government in check from wrongfully imprisoning the innocent, or to let the government imprison anyone it wants in the slight chance that a few of those people maybe might have done something bad?

If the choice really were total anarchy vs total control, I choose anarchy. I'd rather run the risk of being killed by a mad man, than guaranteed that my life will be taken from me by the government.

Re:

Some food for thought, to follow the logic of your argument:

Here we have Billy bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's son (Yes, I know their names don't work that way). He takes off after his dear old dad and has committed all sorts of atrocities, with witnesses, video evidence, the works. Due to a technicality, however, the evidence is not admissable in court. No worries, he's clearly guilty, so he's imprisoned/executed, and many lives are saved.

Then, here in the US, there's this guy named Quaker Oates Serial. He's a bit unbalanced, has been on record as wanting to "kill that Muslim in the White House." He hasn't actually done anything, but he is the owner of quite a few guns, including some high powered rifles, and he tneds to make people around him uncomfortable. But, it's clear that he'd go through with an assassination attempt if he had the opportunity, and there are indications that he's making plans for an opportunity. So he's arrested and taken care of.

In your state, there's an odd fellow in the local college, often visits the psychiatrist, not terribly popular, occasionally talks about violent fantasies in his blog. recently dumped by his girlfriend. Better round him up before he goes on a killing spree.

Then it's your next door neighbor, because he talks at dinner parties how Hezbollah has some good points, and we should pay attention to some of the issues.

Then Your wife, who attended an orientation meeting for some radicals in college, becasue the fliers seemed innocuous enough.

Then, finally, they come for you, because, on a bad day in 3rd grade, your mother testifies that you grumbled that you wanted to blow up the school.

how do you add a name

priorities

Did anyone else notice that they don't actually say (though they do imply) that her name was taken off the watch list? The focus of the story was on his firing, not the restoration of her rights. It's as if this is tacitly considered a crime against the state ("you misused the power we entrusted you with!") rather than a crime against an individual ("you exiled me from my homeland!").

It also occurs to my nefarious brain that he might not have been caught if he'd had someone else put his wife's name on the list, perhaps with some trumped-up supporting reasons. Maybe the auditors should start looking for groups of people banishing each others' enemies...

These are all good questions and in fact need to be discussed and different viewpoints examined. I can totally understand the mentality of the Jack Bauer mindset of "this guy knows where the bomb is and if we don't torture him it will go off and kill millions."

In a just society would the bomb go off, killing millions while in an unjust society, millions are saved?